January 21, 2010

[The Massachusetts election] confirms to me something I’ve long thought and hate saying, but I’ve always thought that deep down, Americans do not want to be covered. They just don’t want national health. They say they do when they’re asked. They put it quite high up on the list. They feel they ought to say yes, but they don’t really... You and your children should be at risk. It’s funny, but it’s there somewhere.

67 comments:

Sometimes Hitchens is an idiot. Americans HAVE health insurance. Obamacare was threatening to reduce what most of us have. THAT is why we were upset--NOT because we were afraid we would have coverage.

Hitchens can be entertaining, but sometimes he is very stupid and overcome by the opportunity to say something simply because it sounds smug and contemptuous. He can't resist the tone, even if his content is an idiocy.

Americans are risk takers and individualists. They at heart don't want the government providing things they feel they should provide for themselves. Always have been. That is how we built the country. Hitchens, being a socialist is puzzeled by this. If he understood history, he would know Britian was once this way. That is how they built their empire. Sadly, most of those kinds of people died on the fields of Flanders and Normandy. All that is left are the shirkers, cowards and their decendents.

I agree, Rialby. Hitchens may no longer be a Trotskyite (and I sometimes how such a well-educated and supposedly intelligent man could have stuck for so long to such an evil philosophy) but I think he's still some sort of big-government, nanny-state socialist. I suspect that his alliance with American conservatives is just about solely based on his fear of islamo-fascism.

In fact, I think Hitchens' puzzlement is feigned, because he cannot be unaware that many Americans do not like the idea of a total government takeover of health care, and reject the dishonest argument that "it doesn't matter because insurance companies already make decisions on what will be covered." Which brings me back to something I have long seen in Hitchens (and others), namely that he sometimes uses his intelligence to construct clever arguments that refute his opponents not by engaging their arguments but by ignoring and/or misstating their arguments.

Yes, Hitchens is an ally in this war, but I wouldn't like to live in a world run by people like him.

By the way, I am personally acquainted with a number of leftists who support the war against islamo-fascism, but who remain committed to a left-wing totalitarian vision of what America should be. The enemy of my enemy may still be my enemy.

You want national health? Give the military 20 years of your life and you and your spouse get free health care for the rest of your life. Your kids get it free too until they're 23 if they stay in school.

Hey, it's right there for the taking, you might even learn some job skills!

There is no sky in their world until everyone has govt health care,goes to college, takes mass transit, lives in a 900sf house, has no more than two kids, listens to and believes everything they hear on NPR, eats no cheese or fried foods, avoids salt, exercises six days a week,attends church maybe twice a year but re-cycles religiously, supports gay marriage and all day govt paid pre-school and day care.

Until that happens, they get no joy in looking at the color of the sky.

"You want national health? Give the military 20 years of your life and you and your spouse get free health care for the rest of your life. Your kids get it free too until they're 23 if they stay in school.

Hey, it's right there for the taking, you might even learn some job skills!"

This isn't quite right anymore.

What your family might get is regular old health insurance while you're active duty and if you've never had to wade through the paperwork in order to get it, you've never waded through paperwork. In the civilian world the customer is always right and the process is usually pretty straight forward. In the military you're expected to locate the hoops yourself before you light them on fire and jump through them. Or maybe that was just Dental... or they came to their senses between when they started changing to private insurers and now. A person can hope. It really really *really* pissed me off, though, standing in Personnel and being told that the process was as punitively complex as it was "because it's free". Bull-freaking-shit... it wasn't free, it was part of my pay that I had earned.

What you get when you join up yourself is still the basic "show up with a complaint and get treated just so long as you've got something they want to bother with or else you're out of luck because you can't go elsewhere" treatment.

Which is usually great because great people usually want to bother... but if they don't you're sort of screwed.

I wonder, if polled, how many people with military experience favor nationalized health care.

>>pst314 said...Hitchens (and others), namely that he sometimes uses his intelligence to construct clever arguments that refute his opponents not by engaging their arguments but by ignoring and/or misstating their arguments.<<

Hear, hear. Though he occasionally says something clever and true, Hitchens makes no consistent sense. Has he ever explained why he opposed Desert Storm but supports the current occupation? Also, the "I hate God" stuff is so sophomoric. Grow up, who cares.

I love how he brings up dentistry us one of the desiderata of National Health. Like that's what everyone admires about the English, their wonderful teeth.

Can't he figure out why Americans are afraid of Obamacare, first and foremost? It's because we know our government will completely screw it up, like it does most things! That it will use the health care system as a jobs program for the unemployable products of our public education system.

All these social programs originated in Bismarck's Germany. There's something to be said for security but, at least in Germany, all that dependence on the government undermined the wariness that a prudent citizen should feel towards the warm, clinging hug of the government....When the sweat lodge gets too hot, you want someone to say that the sweat lodge is too hot and to tell the door guardian to kiss off. It speaks well of America and Americans that they trampled the portal guardian on their way out of the sweat lodge. It speaks ill of the Brits that they have submitted to several generations of substandard care simply because the care was (theoretically) egalitarian in its delays and screw-ups.....This health bill was too misshapen and monstruous to be anything but stillborn. I suppose someone somewhere may have benefited from it, but I don't know a single person in my frame of reference who would have benefited from it.

I actually kind of admire Hitchens for this - he's not exactly right, but at least he sort of gets it. Most Americans are independent enough to trust themselves rather than trusting big government. Americans generally don't object to some government assistance as a last resort (i.e. Medicaid), but it should be the LAST resort. Brits complain constantly about the NHS, but most lack the money (after paying taxes to support the NHS) or the will to purchase better care privately. And at least they have the option of doing so, unlike Canadians.

True.Americans say they want affordable healthcare. They say they want the corporations and Big pharma to stop running everything. They say they wants costs to come down for hospital care, for prescription drugs, for general doctor visits. They say they want to be able to get health insurance without pre-existing conditions.But ultimately they don't. Like the GOP they like paying more. They like that they are being raped by the health care industry. They like the there is no regulation because health care and capitalism are one and the same.They think if people cannot afford health care then there must be something wrong with them.

Conservatives feel if they pay more then they must be getting the best care. They are that dumb.

Also, while I oppose big government programs like national health insurance on general principle, one should also note that Americans just aren't good at big government. While Americans are very good at a lot of things, the Euros, esp the Germans and French, really are pretty good at running a civil service. Sure they is inefficient and moribund by private sector standards (esp American ones), but they generally perform to their own low standards and deliver what is expected.

Americans SUCK at civil services, which is one good reason why they should be kept as small as possible.

Most Americans still recognize that (1) the State is the least efficient provider of products and services(2) when the State is in charge, they do not see you as a customer, and do not care what you want or need(3) corruption is inevitable when the State manages 1/6th of the economy(4) socialism is anti-liberty

Are you actually naive enough to think that the current system is without fault? Or that for profit corporations are somehow better than some kind of government oversight?

Please note that there are NO proposals in which the government would be running healthcare. They would instead be helping provide people in need with the ability to get healthcare.Have you heard of Medicare? It doesn't control the health industry. It helps elderly people pay for doctors and hospitals and prescriptions. This is a good thing. And it is something the government runs.

AJ Lynch:"There is no sky in their world until everyone has govt health care,goes to college, takes mass transit, lives in a 900sf house, has no more than two kids, listens to and believes everything they hear on NPR, eats no cheese or fried foods, avoids salt, exercises six days a week,attends church maybe twice a year but re-cycles religiously, supports gay marriage and all day govt paid pre-school and day care."

Matt:"Are you actually naive enough to think that the current system is without fault? Or that for profit corporations are somehow better than some kind of government oversight?"

You guys would get a lot further in these discussions if you'd make the tiniest effort to understand why you are opposed instead of throwing straw all over the place. For example, almost no one thinks the current system is "without fault."

But, yeah, I'm much more comfortable dealing with corporations subject to competitive pressures than to government bureaucrats which are much less so.

"Please note that there are NO proposals in which the government would be running healthcare."

There is no "system" currently - rather it is an industry. That industry has many faults, inefficiencies, etc. When those faults become too egregious, they are generally corrected in the market place. I am not wholly adverse to using some, limited regulation to try to mitigate or ameliorate some of those faults.

If the Dems get their wish then we will have a system - a nation-wide government system no less - and there will be no mechanism to introduce changes but for lobbying the legislature, and all mistakes, problems etc will be massive and nation-wide. Why do you want a system that requires you to employ fat-cat lobbyists to change the terms of your insurance policy?

We, the voters, should force the legislature to purchase and pay for their own health care. This would end the debate.

They have the Rolls Royce of health care insurance paid for by us. Either we get the same or they can go and pound sand.

As to those without, not our problem. They are responsible for themselves. It is called personal responsibility. There is health insurance for the poor- it is called medicaid. Run through the states. As to the rest, prioritize your spending and buy the damn insurance instead of the big screen TVs and all the other crap you buy.

Matt said, They say they wants costs to come down for hospital care, for prescription drugs, for general doctor visits. They say they want to be able to get health insurance without pre-existing conditions.

Those two groups may not be the same groups. I, for one, want costs to come down but find the idea of ignoring pre-existing conditions foolish.

When the government tells insurance companies what kind of insurance they must and must not offer, they run the insurance industry. How can you not understand that?

We want our class distinctions and don't want income or class equality. The industrial "middle class" that appeared after WW2 was an aberration, and we probably accepted it in fear that if we didn't then we would provide an opening for communism. Now that we've won the Cold War, we have no need for the notion anymore. We want social Darwinism; we want a strong, productive achievement class to inspire us, and that necessitates a strong distinction between rich and poor. We can't have that and have large socialist-style state programs-- the two are just incompatible! Perhaps it would be nice if they were not, at least with regard to health care coverage, but I think we recognize the limits of the real world even if we are hesitant to admit them.

What we do believe is that a "rising tide lifts all boats". We believe that capitalism makes everyone better off in the long run. Just as everyone came to own a TV set, we expect that soon everyone will come to have access to a basically acceptable level of health care. Our government's policies ought to be oriented toward that goal.

So, Lawrence, if you think that people without jobs should still be able to carry insurance, how about if you support the suggestion that we uncouple employment and insurance? Have you written to your Senators and Congressmen to ask them to give the health insurance tax advantage to individuals instead of to the corporation?

@prarie wind- You could start by letting sole proprietors deduct health insurance as a business expense! Do you know that we still can't do that? We have to pay FICA tax on the money we use for health insurance premiums! And neither the House nor Senate "reform" bills changed that-- we self-employed weren't enough of an interest group to be heard, even though our position on this is based on honest fairness and equality.

Matt, your ignorance should disqualify you from commenting on such matters. Everyone knows Medicare is the price setter for commercial and medicaid rates. In that way, it very much controls the health industry, since reimbursements are at least 85% of the economic game.

I admit it. The minute Obama won and healthcare looked like it was going through, I acquiesced, but I entered deeply apathetic state of mind. I began considering moving to another country for the first time ever. Not in anger like a Bush-hater moving to France, but out of Pure Boredom and lack of inspiration.

I do think the corporations, as much as government, have a chokehold on regular citizen liberty and that is the real battle that needs to be fought - but if all you can come up with is an enormous and crap bureaucratic regulation by an obnoxious elite and massively inefficient and slow government- then why do I live here?

Why not go live in New Zealand or Chile? The minute you take away that essential vision of the US - surrender- say, okay, it's officially Over, we're joining the Global Community, and we'll be just like all the others - we'll sit up straight and eat our peas and carrots and be Good Citizens - then you lose the entire point.

I lived w/o health insurance into my early 30s. I did it very consciously. It was a high wire act - because, I don't know, I'm on my own little trip, that's why. I should be free to be on it. I used the $ I saved to hike Ireland one year where the visiting Brits were naturally horrified that I didn't have health insurance. I loved it.

UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar announced his "miracle" recovery from a career-threatening digestive disease Wednesday while slamming the health care he received in Canada after falling sick during a hunting trip.

The six-foot-four Lesnar, who has to cut weight to make the UFC heavyweight limit of 265 pounds, said he had been ailing for some time last year, before falling seriously ill during a trip to Canada. What had started as flu-like symptoms was upgraded to mononucleosis and then diverticulosis.

Asked about the low point during the last few months of his illness, Lesnar said: "Probably the lowest moment was getting care from Canada."

"They couldn't do nothing for me," he noted in a later media conference call Wednesday. "It was like I was in a Third World country."

I wonder, if polled, how many people with military experience favor nationalized health care.

I have tricare reserve select (what a dumb name) and it's pretty good. No complaints. It's not too expensive. It's fairly new, reservists didn't used to be eligible for medical insurance unless they were mobilized. The paper work is not much different than private insurance.

I think most people in the military from years ago just don't realize how much paperwork is involved in insurance. In the old days it was all just simply free for your entire family with no paperwork whatsoever.

The problem is that you had to wait in horrible lines at the dispensary and military got head-of-line privileges over your sick child (barring emergencies, of course). I remember when I was a kid and we used to sit for hours in the lobby while waiting for a doctor. It was kind of like what you hear about in Canada and Britain. Tricare seems to have solved that problem. Funny how even that slight privatization made things so much better.

I remember when they started the whole tricare system back in the late 80's or so. I thought it was a horrible betrayal of the promise of medical care for life. But it turned out to be the best thing that happened to military dependents. Now the military doctors can focus more on military medicine and taking care of people in uniform. Now dependents get real pediatricians and gynecologists and whatever specialists without having to deal with long lines to see a podiatriast for your psoriasis.

I am a psychologist who rents space at a pediatric practice. TriCare is my favorite insurance company to work with. First, the people insured by TriCare are all military, and I like supporting military families. They are easy to work with as well.

And then there is the ease of payment, no pre-authorization for outpatient psychotherapy, and that they are my second highest paying insurace company.

Good stuff all around.

The pediatricians around me do not take new TriCare patients because the insurance pays them less the TennCare (Tennessee Medicaid.) NOBODY pays me less than TennCare, and I would not take the insurance. TennCare pays very little, I really only take the insurance for kids because it is the right thing to do and it is not their fault that they are on tax payer assistance. And many times they have been taken from their families due to abuse, so these kids could us some good services.

But why does TriCare pay me well while they stiff the pediatricians? .

Probably has something to do with the political correctness of treating PTSD. They want people in the military to get prompt and thorough treatment for these problems. That's either because they want to help veterans or because they want to increase the number of psyche claims show that we're all crazy. :)

I live in London now and people here seem to be under the impression that no one in the US has health care other than the rich and that people are dying in droves outside of hospitals. (OK I exagerate a little)

I live in London now and people here seem to be under the impression that no one in the US has health care other than the rich and that people are dying in droves outside of hospitals. (OK I exagerate a little)

That comedienne guy on the MTV music awards basically said that (something about people dying in the streets, which was a bit melodramatic), so maybe they do really think it. Honestly, it seems like people sometimes complain about cost, and some people do go bankrupt, but you don’t really hear about people not getting care, particularly in emergency situations.

1) The majority of Americans HAVE health insurance. And maybe in this case self-interest (i.e. higher taxes and higher health insurance premiums) won out over altruism (i.e. expanding coverage) I hear self-interest sometimes comes into play in politics2) And maybe in this STATE-SPECIFIC ELECTION the voters already had "universal coverage" and therefore even had less interest in raising their taxes to cover uninsured in say .....Nebraska3) And maybe voters were as concerned about long-term national debt and the burden it will place on their children and how that debt will threaten our ability to provide healthcare for seniors and the poor in the future.4) and maybe.....

Is it ever ok for an interviewer to occasionally repond by asking "you just pulled that one out of your ass, didn't you?"

Shanna said..."Honestly, it seems like people sometimes complain about cost, and some people do go bankrupt, but you don’t really hear about people not getting care, particularly in emergency situations."

I went to London in November, 2000, with a group of friends. I think it was about a week after the election and the Dems were in full cry that they'd been cheated.

We were staying with a very nice English couple that ran a bed and breakfast out of their home in Streatham. They were aghast at how unconcerned we were about the situation. You could tell that from their perspective a smiliar situation in the UK would have resulted in panic in the streets.

You also hear about people not getting care and dying in England or in Canada or in any country in Europe as well.

I recall one case about a woman in the US dying after going to the emergency room more than once and being turned away. Apparently they thought she wasn't really sick, it wasn't really an emergency, and she was just complaining.

Now, how is this not going to happen with some sort of universal health insurance? Do you think it won't?

My husband didn't get care for 3 herniated disks in his back in the Air Force for nearly a year because his doctor didn't want to schedule an MRI. When he got orders for a new base we got a civilian MRI and walked it into the new hospital, which probably would have treated him in any case, truthfully, but people shouldn't have to PCS to the other side of the world to get medical care.

I know someone in England who's husband was denied approval for a specialist for his sleep apnia because he wasn't fat. I don't know how that one resolved.

These sorts of errors are not *solved* by getting everyone health care.

The solution isn't universal health insurance, but being sure that however care is delivered that people can go to a different doctor or decide themselves and over-rule their national health service doctor about seeing a specialist.

Hospitals are not allowed to turn people with emergencies away from emergency rooms... that doesn't mean that the real people working there might not mistake the nature of the emergency.